Page 23 of The Model Debutante
‘Oh, how did you guess? Your lordship,’ she added hastily, bobbing a curtsey.
‘You were described to me,’ Nick said simply, enjoying the deepening of the flush of pleasure, the flutter of the long lashes. For a man who had always favoured dark-haired women his life suddenly appeared to be full of blondes. It made an agreeable change.
‘I…I had better go and find Tal…Miss Grey, my lord. One simply cannot rely on Annie. Will you not sit down?’ She gestured at the sofa, recalled her mending, hastily whisked it from under the cushion to under her arm and hurried out.
Nick grinned. The enchantingly fresh young woman who had just fluttered out was either an exceptional actress or that contradiction in terms, a chaste opera dancer, just as Talitha Grey had said.
Instead of taking the proffered seat he began to prowl around the room. It was a rare glimpse for a man into a feminine world which was not arranged for display or entertaining, but simply for a group of women to live their daily lives.
He found a neat stack of account books next to a spike impaling tradesmen’s bills. A basket of laces, ribbons and artificial flowers stood by a sewing box and a large velvet pincushion studded with glass-headed pins. A pile of novels and some copies of fashion journals were stacked on a shelf and a chessboard was set out for the start of a game. He moved a pawn in an opening gambit and continued to look around. A quill stained with red ink lay beside an open exercise book.
Nick paused and flicked open a page of the lexicon next to the exercise book. Greek? The door behind him opened to reveal not Miss Grey, but her governess friend. ‘Miss Scott, good afternoon. You have surprised me reading what I imagine must be your Greek lexicon.’
‘Yes, my lord.’ She stood there regarding him from under level dark brows. He expected disapproval, instead he found himself unable to interpret the assessing look in her eyes. ‘I teach both Latin and Greek besides the modern languages.’
‘I had not realised you teach boys,’ he remarked, more to make conversation than anything and was surprised by the flash of irritation in her steady gaze.
‘I do not. These days I teach only girls. Perhaps your lordship does not consider the female mind has the capacity for the ancient languages?’
‘I had never given it any consideration,’ he admitted. ‘But I can see no useful purpose in it for a woman.’
‘Beside the intellectual discipline, the improved understanding of modern tongues and of history and art?’ she enquired frostily.
‘Well, there is that of course, but if a girl is to marry…’
‘Not all of us do,’ Miss Scott informed him. ‘I see no reason why an unmarried lady should have her intellectual range diminished because of that. Nor why a married woman may not be educated.’ Her expression softened slightly. ‘No doubt you consider that a married woman has no need to use her intelligence on more than the ordering of the household? Not that housekeeping is as simple a task as most men appear to think it.’
Nick thought of his mother, smiling gently whenever any problem arose. “Your Papa will know what to do” was her inevitable response, and more recently, “Whatever you say, Nicholas dear.” And his aunt, undoubtedly intelligent, vibrant,energetic – but quite content to place her business affairs entirely in his hands.
‘There is no need for a lady to concern herself with difficult matters,’ he began.
‘But not all of us choose to be helpless pawns,’ said another voice gently. Miss Grey walked into the room behind her friend. ‘I believe you wish to see me, Lord Arndale?’
Nick took a step forward, found his foot entangled, glanced down and saw he was standing on a piece of fabric. He stooped to pick it up and realised it was a garment he had no difficulty in recognising as a chemise. Neither young lady appeared prepared to help him out of his difficulty so he folded it neatly and placed it on the side table. Keeping his face entirely bland he looked up and found he had met his match in coolness in Miss Scott whose expression showed not the slightest recognition that he had been handling a piece of intimate apparel. Miss Grey on the other hand appeared ready to give way to laughter. Her eyes sparkled with amusement at his predicament and her lower lip was caught firmly between white teeth.
The thought of nipping that fullness between his own teeth struck him with a bolt of erotic heat. A flare of it must have shown in his eyes for instantly hers sobered, widened and he wondered if she had read the nature of his thoughts and was in tune with them. Then the moment of mutual awareness was gone and she was waving him towards the sofa.
‘Will you take tea?’
‘No, thank you. I have called simply with a message from Lady Parry.’
Talitha Grey answered the queries with a directness which reinforced his knowledge of her previously straightened circumstances. ‘Trunks? Why just the one and a valise.’
‘And several new bandboxes,’ the governess added dryly.
‘Oh yes. I was forgetting.’ She turned to him, smiling slightly.‘I have succumbed to the lure of shopping.’
‘In that case I am surprised you have had the time to attend to your new business venture.’ He watched not Talitha but her friend and saw the look of surprise and speculation she directed at him. But to his disappointment the governess did not speak.
‘Ventures, in the plural. Yes, when one has been accustomed to working for one’s living, my lord, one can find plenty of time in the day for business. Shopping is hardly time consuming.’
‘I suspect you may modify your opinion on that after a short experience of my aunt’s approach to the subject.’
Talitha merely smiled politely. It was intensely frustrating. Every time he spoke to her he had the impression that she was keeping a part of herself hidden from him and he only caught brief flashes of the real Talitha Grey. Now he had the question of her “business interests” to add to the list for Tolliver to investigate.
It was not until Nick was half way down the front steps that he caught himself wondering why he wanted to find out about that aspect of her life. She was being advised by Dover and by the bank so she was hardly going to do something imprudent. Nor was it his business if she did, as she had so frostily reminded him during that encounter in Gunter’s.
He was not given to self-deception and he did not indulge in it now. Finding out about Miss Grey’s “secret” might have started out in his desire to protect his aunt but now finding out everything about her had assumed an altogether different character. Nick smiled ruefully as he nodded to his groom and got up into his phaeton. This was becoming personal.
